Autumn Leaves at Mill Grange

by Jenny Kane

  Phil kept his eyes on the archaeologists in the trenches. ‘The rest of us will work here until the 30th. We’ll be with you about ten o’clock on the 1st. That’ll give us time to get everything recorded and safely preserved here until Dan’s team legally take over.’

  Shaun looked up to see Ajay help Thea from the trench she’d been helping to draw. ‘And the AA? Are they joining us at Mill Grange? They’ve done some geophysics already of course, but more would be good. Thea is convinced the fortlet is wider than we thought.’

  ‘They can do a day, but we can’t run to more. It’s pretty much the most expensive thing we do and—’

  ‘I know. Time is money.’ Delving his hands into his pockets Shaun watched as the tracks that the main camera moved around on were dismantled. ‘Thanks, Phil, I know it’s been a pain in the arse trying to squeeze another show in, but it is appreciated.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ Phil kept watching the site, adding a friendly warning in case the message hadn’t got through. ‘It’ll only be a small excavation, riding on the back of what Thea is already planning to do. More a history of the place and a look into what Sam’s intending to do there.’

  ‘Absolutely. Thea, Helen, Tom and I can do the dig. There’ll be no need to pay the Landscape Treasures diggers, although if they want to come along, they can.’

  ‘I’ll arrange a staff meeting in the pub tonight and we can see who wants to volunteer.’ Phil rubbed his hands together as if everything was sorted. ‘Let’s hope nothing else goes wrong.’

  ‘Of course it won’t.’

  No sooner were Shaun’s words leaving his lips, than Sophie shouted across the garden, ‘Shaun, Phil, you have got to come and see this!’

  *

  Having heard the cry from Sophie and Amber’s trench, Thea and Ajay ran towards them, joining Shaun and Phil.

  Amber was on her knees, smoothing a fine brush over a section of what was unmistakably a very old floor tile.

  ‘You have to be joking.’ Shaun looked at Phil, who immediately ran towards the camera crew to stop them putting their equipment away.

  Cream, with hints of yellow and a terracotta red, four complete and two broken square tiles sat in two unequal rows of four and two. They’d been nestled on top of the bedrock with a layer of soil. Adorned with a simple geometric pattern, which had been added with a type of potter’s slip, they were a stark contrast to the usual wooden floors of so many Saxon churches.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Sophie and Amber exchanged puzzled glances, as Sophie asked, ‘Aren’t you thrilled?’

  ‘We are. At least, we are for you and Cornish Heritage.’ Shaun put an arm around Thea’s waist. ‘Just not so much for the team awaiting us at Mill Grange.’

  ‘Oh God, it won’t put back the dig will it?’ Thea swallowed. ‘I only just told Tina we were coming.’

  ‘It depends how many tiles there are, but getting home tonight is highly unlikely.’

  *

  Sam held out his tablet so Helen and Tina could see the plan he and Tom had sketched for the layout of the stable block.

  ‘We wanted you to see our ideas for the layout of this place before we order the shelving material.’ Sam stood in the open stable doorway. ‘Tom, can you do the running-around bit?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’ Tom headed to the back wall. ‘Start here?’

  ‘Yep.’ Sam, with Helen to one side of him and Tina on the other, pointed to the plan. ‘Where Tom is now, doing his impression of a model showing off fine brickwork, we thought of putting a long row of shelving, three layers high…’

  Tom did a twirl, gesturing his arms up and down the walls to denote the area, making everyone laugh.

  ‘…then in the far right corner, we could have a set of drawers for pegs, string, small tape measures, pencils and so on.’

  Helen indicated her approval, before saying, ‘Don’t make the drawers go too high up the wall. Some of us shorter folk hate having to balance on ladders to get a tent peg.’

  Sam got ready to jot down some measurements. ‘Good point. How high is good?’

  Pulling a measure from his pocket, Tom said, ‘Let’s sort that now. If you come here, Helen, we can measure your reach.’

  Tina laughed as Helen’s expression creased into disbelief. ‘I’m pretty sure that isn’t how it works. Shelf units come in standard sizes, not short-people sizes. Just get a five foot one, not a six foot high one.’

  ‘Oh you’re no fun!’ Tom winked, and beckoned to Helen. Seconds later, she was standing in the corner with her arms up so they could see how far she could reach, and Tom was measuring her stretch from the floor up.

  ‘Why are we doing this?’

  ‘Partly because it looks funny, and partly because I am going to make the shelves myself, so we might as well get the height right.’ Sam wrote down the measurements.

  Helen came to Tina’s side to look at the plan. ‘Hold on a minute, I’m only going to be here for another few weeks. Shouldn’t you go via Thea’s height if you want to bespoke the shelves?’

  ‘Thea’s about the same height as you, and in all seriousness, I think it’s a good idea to keep things at as low a level as is practical because of wheelchair users.’

  ‘We only have one wheelchair access room in the manor.’ Tina twirled a plait as she thought. ‘I hadn’t anticipated anyone in a chair being involved in the dig, purely because of the practical difficulties of getting in and out of trenches.’

  It was Tom who spoke first. ‘But the option should still be there for them to learn the skills, don’t you think, Sam?’

  ‘Very much so.’ Sam surveyed the space before him. ‘It wouldn’t be easy to get wheelchairs down to the fortlet, but if someone really wanted to have a go, I wouldn’t want to stop them.’

  ‘The trestle tables.’ Tom pointed to the stack of broken tables in the corner. ‘Could we fashion some sort of smooth run from the house to the fort if we needed to?’

  Sam grinned. ‘That is exactly what we could do. After that, if someone wants to dig, then they’d understand about having to be lifted in and out of the trenches I’m sure.’

  ‘They’d have faced worse indignities.’ Tom was lost in memories for a moment before he snapped out of it. ‘What about this wall? Hooks for shovels and so on?’

  Helen, Tom and Sam were in deep discussion as to how many hooks would be needed and where the wheelbarrows could go, when Tina’s mobile burst into life.

  ‘It’s Thea.’ She waved a hand to ask for quiet as she answered. ‘Hi, Thea, we’re just sorting out where to put all the Landscape Treasures equipment when it comes…’ There was a pause while she listened to Thea speak. ‘What? You have got to be kidding!’

  Sam looked up sharply and came to Tina’s side. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Hang on, Thea, Sam’s here too. I’ll tell him.’ Tina lowered the phone. ‘They were in the process of packing up when one of the trenches revealed some floor tiles. Saxon. Unbelievably rare.’

  ‘Which they have to stay and film?’ Sam closed his eyes for a second. ‘Right. So is the filming here off or simply uncertain again?’

  Tina took hold of Sam’s hand as she returned to her call. ‘What does this mean for us, Thea?’

  Everyone in the stable had held their breath as Tina hung up the call a few minutes later.

  ‘Everything is on hold for now. It could be a case of filming this extra development this afternoon but, should more tiles be found, they’ll have to hang around. It would be good for the Cornish episode as they had no finds as such, just the structure.’

  ‘Oh hell.’ Sam let out a puff of air as he pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. ‘I was going to talk to you about this once we were done here, Tina.’

  She took the note from his hand. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I got a quote for renovating the greenhouse from that bloke Father recommended. It’s two grand cheaper than the last one.’

  ‘Eight thousand pounds,’ Tina whispered. ‘That’s how muc
h Treasure Hunters are offering.’

  ‘Yes.’ Sam wiped a hand across his forehead. ‘I haven’t actually turned them down yet.’

  ‘You haven’t?’ Tina’s mouth dropped open.

  Tom’s eyebrows rose as he asked, ‘You wanted to keep your options open. Just in case?’

  ‘More that there’s so much to do here, I simply hadn’t got round to turning their offer down.’

  Forcing herself to stay businesslike, and banish the imaginary conversation she was already having with Thea about why Landscape Treasures would not be filming at Mill Grange after all, Tina asked, ‘So, what should we do?’

  ‘Carry on. It may well be that Shaun and his team will be here on the 1st as planned. If not, I will accept the Treasure Hunters offer, and it will serve that Sophie right if she has to fork out the money. In the meantime, we will move forward with the dig anyway. I want to have it open before the first guests on the 5th regardless. That okay with you two?’

  Helen and Tom nodded.

  Sam slipped his hand into Tina’s. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think we all need a strong cup of coffee.’

  Forty-Five

  September 28th

  ‘I always thought the Anglo-Saxons were aceramic.’ Sophie lay on her stomach, outside the trench, reaching down to what she and Amber had painstakingly uncovered, flicking away the occasional fall of grit from the surrounding wall.

  ‘For a long time they were.’ Thea tucked her hair out of her eyes as she lay next to Sophie. ‘But towards the end, especially once the eleventh century arrived, that was no longer the case. More European influences were arriving all the time, and then William the Conqueror arrived with his forces and everything changed.’ Thea studied the faint patterns that crossed the rough squares. ‘These are something special. I wonder if they were imported?’

  ‘An expert from the museum in Truro is on their way. They should be able to tell us a bit more about them.’

  ‘Good job Phil hadn’t got all the cameras packed away. He’s bound to want Shaun to interview the expert.’

  Wiping her hair from her eyes, Sophie muttered, ‘I wanted to say sorry. Again. I was such an idiot.’

  ‘I assume you’ve got past your crush now you know Shaun is a normal human being.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Don’t answer if this is too personal, but since you left school, have you mixed much with other people, or has it just been you and your books, television, social media and celeb mags?’

  Sophie couldn’t speak for a second as she heard the last six years of her life summarised so neatly. Swallowing back the emotional lump that had formed in her throat, she replied, ‘No social media. No one to connect with, but the rest is true enough. Even when I screwed up all my courage and enrolled on the distance-learning course, I didn’t meet other people. I knew Mother would go spare when she found out about it. I even got the cook to hide the post, so she wouldn’t find out.’

  Thea couldn’t help but smile. ‘What with your father’s secret paper reading and your post, it appears your cook is a loss to MI5!’

  Sophie’s laugh died as she said, ‘I do meet people sometimes, but mostly at parties my parents drag me to.’

  ‘Husband hunting?’

  Sophie dipped her head. ‘It’s like something out of the Dark Ages.’

  Thea laughed. ‘No, this is from the Dark Ages-ish.’ She pointed to the tiled floor. ‘If you ask me, they had more sense back then.’

  Hearing footsteps, Thea looked round to see Shaun heading in their direction. ‘I was about to come and see what needed doing next.’

  Helping his girlfriend to her feet, he gave Sophie a perfunctory nod, before leading Thea out of earshot. ‘Sam just called.’

  ‘Is everything alright?’ Thea felt her palms prickle with apprehension.

  ‘Turns out, he hasn’t turned the Treasure Hunters offer down yet.’

  ‘But, it was only…?’ Thea waved a hand behind her in Sophie’s direction.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. As far as Treasure Hunters are concerned it was a genuine offer. There’s more. Sam’s had a maintenance quote in for work at Mill Grange that the fee Treasure Hunters are offering would cover.’

  Thea found herself holding her breath as she asked, ‘He’s going to go with them anyway?’

  ‘Unless we are with him by midnight on the 1st of October, then yes.’

  *

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  Helen pulled back from the scullery office door. She’d been on her way to email Exeter University to confirm that they wouldn’t need any student help for a while, when Tom’s voice echoed down the corridor. Taking a few steps backwards, she froze as his voice got louder.

  ‘But you promised me, Sue. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I gave up a job I loved. So I could see my son at the weekends.’

  Helen knew she shouldn’t be hearing this, but she felt rooted to the spot as Tom’s tone dropped to weary exasperation.

  ‘There is no more money. You get everything I earn beyond my rent and food money. Which is fine, as long as it is spent on Dylan.’

  There was a pause, in which Helen imagined Sue yelling, “Of course it’s all spent on our son”, before Tom spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Sue, stop and think. I am fourteen miles away. I am here to see Dylan at the weekends as we agreed; or more often if you need a night off. So, why can’t I see him on Saturday?’

  Helen took a reverse step, as Tom responded down the line. ‘Why didn’t you just say that Dylan had been invited to a school friend’s house in the first place, rather than make it sound like you didn’t want me to see him? Honestly, Sue, you don’t half make life difficult. The answer is obvious; I’ll have Dylan on Saturday and he can visit his friend on Sunday as arranged. I can collect him at nine and have him back in Tiverton by bedtime Saturday night… Okay then, by six o’clock.’

  Tom mumbled something else and then slammed the phone down.

  After counting to ten, Helen walked forward. Trying to act as if she had no idea he’d just had a blazing row down the phone. ‘Hey, Tom.’

  Shocked to see her, Tom ran his hands over his face. ‘Oh God, did you hear me shouting?’

  ‘A bit.’ Helen sank into Thea’s chair and turned on the laptop.

  ‘Sorry.’ He slapped a palm against the desk. ‘Dylan. I’m supposed to have him every other weekend, but Sue always makes it difficult. It’s like she enjoys the hold over me.’

  Having no idea what to say, Helen played safe. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  Tom grunted as he said, ‘Yesterday, when we were in the stables sorting out the shelves and stuff, you said you’d only be here a few weeks. You meant months, right? You’re here for the same time as me?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I’m on an extended holiday from work. I’ll have to go back soon.’

  Tom sighed. ‘This is not turning into a good day.’ Excusing himself, he left Helen sitting at the desk, feeling rather confused.

  *

  Sam and Tina stood in the middle of the stable block. He was holding her hand; his breathing slightly too fast, but there were no visible signs of sweat or shaking. His back was to the doors, but both were fully open.

  ‘Are you ready for me to shut the first door?’ Bert asked from his chair in the corner of the room.

  ‘I think so.’

  Sam couldn’t look at the old man as he got up. He didn’t want to see the painted blue door as it shut out the precious daylight.

  ‘The second door is still open,’ Bert said cheerfully. ‘And you know that’s okay because you’ve done it twice before and survived.’

  ‘Twice?’ Sam kept his eyes on the imaginary shelf system. ‘You mean once.’

  ‘No, twice. The door swung to when you and I were in here the other day. You didn’t notice, but we were enclosed for over ten minutes before the wind opened it up again.’

  Sam didn’t move. ‘I had no idea.’

  Tina kiss
ed his cheek. ‘I’m so proud of you.’

  ‘Thanks, but we’ve got a bit of a way to go yet.’

  ‘Small steps, my boy.’ Bert got up again and went to reopen the door, but Sam stopped him.

  ‘Maybe leave it for a tiny bit longer.’

  ‘Okay.’ Bert sat back down again. ‘While we’re here then, tell me how you’re getting on with stepping inside the manor itself.’

  ‘Not great.’ Sam tutted to himself. ‘I can sit in the doorway to the kitchen, and that’s okay, but I haven’t gone beyond.’

  ‘But you come inside through the back door all the time. Well, every time you need the bathroom. Why is that different do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Sam shrugged. ‘It’s silly, because the kitchen has a big window overlooking the garden and is far less enclosed than the washroom.’

  ‘It’s probably because, not only does it have that huge window you can jump through, but you’re also on your own in the bathroom. If you have a panic attack you know you can have it in private. In the kitchen you have the added pressure of being seen to be vulnerable if anyone else comes by.’

  Tina gave Bert a warm smile. ‘Makes sense to me.’

  ‘And me, but it isn’t getting me any closer to going inside.’ Sam waved to the doors behind him. ‘This is an outbuilding with two doors, and I’m having hot flushes even though one door is open.’

  ‘Patience, Sam. It will happen.’

  ‘I know, but, Bert, the first guests are arriving in seven days’ time. I wanted to be able to greet them myself in the kitchen, even if I couldn’t go any further.’

  ‘And that’s what you want more than anything?’ Tina asked quietly.

  ‘For now it is.’ There was so much loaded in Sam’s answer that the atmosphere felt choked with emotion, before Bert got to his feet and opened the door.

  ‘Seven days you say.’ The old man tapped his chin. ‘And Thea gets back from Cornwall when?’

  ‘Today or tomorrow.’ Tina added, ‘And the Landscape Treasures team might be here in three days.’

  ‘Three days will be pushing it, but with seven, if it’s really what you want, Sam, then we have a chance. I’ve had an idea.’